The Mess in the Way Is the Way
A Homily on John 11 and Psalm 130
by Griff Martin
March 29, 2020
*This document comes from an oral manuscript.
Let’s start with where we should have started last week… To begin by acknowledging the awkwardness that is this thing we are doing and calling on-line worship and the on-line sermon… Last week while I recorded the sermon, Blake was sitting at the table across from me painting and she looked up halfway through my attempted recording and very sweetly said, “Dad let me help you, you are being so awkward, don’t tell jokes and be less awkward, like way less awkward.”
I tried and in doing so I avoided naming what was really was going on. I tried to just push forward and act as if all of this was normal and then I watched it on Sunday morning and realized something was off, it did not feel right. So I went for a run (my new therapy) and in the middle of the run I realized I had failed to name the truth of this space:
This is awkward and feels oddly vulnerable and not at all what I am used to worship and the sermon feeling like on Sunday morning. And naming this, saying it out loud helps.
I think it’s important to name our feelings, to name our condition, to name our space, to name where we are today.
To name the space we are in today… this shared collective mess.
Typically when I do pastoral counseling, I have one goal: that whomever is talking with me leaves the office or phone call carrying the same issues they brought with them, their issues are not mine to carry. I want to be there in it with them, I want to help be there, I want to help lighten the load and offer any wisdom I might have and all the prayers I have… but the bottom line is it’s their issue, not mine.
As I was taught in pastoral counseling seminar… You end the day and the only monkeys you are carrying on your back are your monkeys, not your people’s monkeys.
And this typically works because your issues are unique to your life… sure there might be some similarities but overall each of our stories is brutifully (beautifully and brutally) unique.
But that is not so true today, today we find ourselves in a collective messy place.
Each time I have gotten off a phone call with someone who is worried about what happens to their kids if they get sick, I feel that same fear with Blake and Jude. Each time I have gotten a call from someone worried about their own health if they catch this, my own heart races because I know that fear because of my own illness last fall. Each time I have gotten an email with someone concerned about finances, my stomach tightens up as I think about the church and finances going forward.
Which means that we are all carrying the same monkey’s on our backs this day: We are all in this mess together and we are all sharing the same anxieties and fears.
And it’s important that we name them.
It’s something I learned from a friend who is very active in the recovery community… He told me once a story of an AA meeting where a first timer came in and started to share a story and then stopped saying, “I can’t share this yet.” The room went quiet and finally the meeting leader said, “I respect that… but if you can’t share the story, can you name it? Because if there is a name for what you are going through that means that you are not the only person who has struggled with it, that you are not alone.”
Naming does that for us. It reminds us we are not alone and it tells us where we are…. And that is key to the adventure of sanctification, you need to name where you start, name your reality so you know what is yours to do next.
And it’s something Jesus found important… Which is something we discover in our Gospel text today….The importance of naming that which needs to be named.
And this text has a lot to teach us this day because it’s a big old messy story which is perfect for the big old messy story we find ourselves in today.
I mean it’s the very text that just self proclaims: this "stinketh"(John 11:39 KJV).
So let’s start there… our story begins with Jesus in one place with the disciples and his people, his family (Mary, Martha and Lazarus) in another. Lazarus gets sick and it’s fatal. He dies and it’s after his death that Jesus and the disciples start to head to Bethany. He gets there and Mary and Martha go to him, there are tears and frustrations and anger and questions. Jesus cries. They go to the tomb and there is a bit of a conversation. Then Jesus brings Lazarus back to life.
The story ends happily ever after. But before we get there, let’s look at the honesty we encounter.
Jesus is honest with the disciples and names the reality of death, a reality we rarely name together.
Mary is honest with her tears.
Martha is honest with her frustration that Jesus was not here when he should have been here.
Jesus is honest with his own grief and weeping.
And all of that happens before we get to Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life.
As if maybe that is exactly what it takes to get to resurrection, we have to go through the mess, we have to cry the tears, we have to express the questions and anger and frustration.
We have to learn the hard awful difficult truth that what’s in the way is often the way.
And we are really good at avoiding whatever is in the way… We have gold stars in that work. We binge Netflix. We do all the social media. We take an Ambien nap. We have an early afternoon cocktail. We read too many books. We talk about other people’s problems. We Google things we should not Google. We become too helpful. We busy ourselves with chores that are not all that important.
We are really experts at hiding our humanness and that will not heal us or help us. It only hinders us. It’s the truth of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, “Come to know what is in front of you, and that which is hidden from you will become clear to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not become manifest.”
It’s the teaching that that which scares us most, that which we don’t want to face, that thing we try to get as much distance from as possible and what we don’t realize is that what we are doing is just walking further and further from it, but we are walking in a big circle because we are still connected to it, the further we walk we are not actually making progress, we are just making our entire lives revolve around that which we don’t want to face and it becomes the very center of our journey.
What’s in the way is the way.
So thank God in this story the disciples did not avoid traveling back to Bethany and avoiding what they thought would be the messy work of grief by binging Netflix. Thank God Mary and Martha did the hard work of speaking hard truths instead of drinking their problems away. Thank God Jesus wept instead of turning to talk about someone else’s problems.
All of the players in today’s Gospel text knew that what was in the way was the way forward.
It’s a children’s book I have shared several times in worship, one of my very favorites, it’s the story of a family going on a bear hunt and they encounter all sorts of potential troubles: dark forest, huge rivers, messy mud, huge hills.
And the refrain from the book…
Can’t go over it,
Can’t go around it,
Can’t go under it,
Must go through it.
There is the Gospel truth. What’s in the way we can’t go over, around or under… We must go through.
In this text we might say it like this: what"stinketh"is salvation.
So what does this look like?
I think it starts with a deep breath and the claiming of courage because you are so much braver than you know.
It starts with naming what you are feeling right now… Are you anxious? Are you scared? Are you bored? Are you angry? Are you depressed? Name it.
It starts with self acceptance that whatever you are feeling right now is okay; in fact it’s not only okay, it’s actually the place that you are most likely going to find God today.
Because the entire Gospel is, not as has often been taught that becoming Christian is about getting over all this humanness, the Gospel teaches us that the way to become Christian is through our humanness, it’s our mess and our fears and our frustrations and anxieties, that is the only way to resurrection.
So today go back and hear the story again, listen to all the brutiful truths and how in this story Jesus teaches us what’s in the way is the way.
So with Coronavirus and this global pandemic and all that we collectively feel, let’s take a deep breath and take in all the courage that we have together, and know that through this is the only way out of this.
So we name it. We cry when we need to cry. We claim our anxieties and worries. We feel our fears. We do all that we can to take care of one another. We listen when a friend needs to cry or share their worries. We offer whatever help we can to one another, we share our funds and our food and our toilet paper. We know that our hearts can still connect from 6 feet away or through a screen. We share all the peace and love we can.
And we do this and by doing so we get through this and we end up at resurrection, the greatest truth we know and will ever know.
And we name the other truths that we know: that love wins, that grace is everything and everywhere, that Jesus is our model, that forgiveness is always needed, that patience is perfection, that the antidote to anxiety is prayer, that silence speaks louder and that all will be well, all manner of things shall be well.
Amen and amen.
*artwork: Jesus Wept by Daniel Bonnell
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